Something Like a Star
by samaryley
Summary: A year to the day after that fateful night on which events were set into action that changed lives - and ended some, as well, Ponyboy returns to the lot to reflect on the past year and find solace in the darkness.


**I own nothing related to The Outsiders. Thank you to S.E. Hinton for letting me borrow.**

………………………….

_So when at times the mob is swayed_

_To carry praise or blame too far,_

_We may choose something like a star_

_To stay our minds on and be staid._

_-from Robert Frost, Choose Something Like a Star_

………………………….

It was a brisk night, the chill in the night air making everything appear crisper and sharper than normal. Leaves rustled underfoot and the tree branches above swayed slightly, though it was nowhere near as windy as it had been that night.

That night... _that night_. A year ago, tonight. It was a date that likely meant little or nothing to anybody but me, just another X on the calendar to every other kid in Tulsa, except for… well, maybe a few of us. I wondered; did those Socs remember, too? Were they marking some sort of morbid anniversary, too, of the day their lives had changed, forever… the day their friend got himself killed, while trying to kill _me_? I kind of hoped they were; it simply didn't seem fair that I should be the only one wondering how life would be now if things hadn't happened they way they had that damned night just one short year ago.

"Everything happens for a reason..."

I'd heard that countless times since losing Johnny and Dallas, from people as close to me as my brothers, as well as from the mouths of virtual strangers. I'd been spending day and night since then searching for that reason, knowing full well that the only reason Johnny and Dallas had been lost in the first place was because of the whole mess I started by running away that night. Well, here I was a full year later, and I still couldn't find any good reason for anything to have gone down the way it did. Things were no better than they had been, really – I couldn't see anything even closely resembling a golden lining that had come out of the whole mess. Darry and Soda still worked their hands to the bone trying to keep things from falling apart around us, Two-Bit still drank too much and refused to grow up, and Steve still skulked around with that piss-poor attitude about life in general that I never quite could understand.

Then there was _me_. I didn't feel like I had changed at all over the past year. I felt like I had been stuck in that week forever- that terrible week of fear and loss and sadness. Three hundred sixty-five days of just trying to _get by_, to push forward through another day, trying to ignore the emptiness that had settled into the pit of my soul. Sure, there had been moments of happiness – laughter, even, occasionally breaking through the fog, but, at the end of the day, that hollow feeling was always still there, eating away at my heart as I rested my head against Soda, eventually slipping away into slumber against the backdrop of his shallow breathing. More often than not, it was that week that ruled my dreams, too, waking me with a start as I screamed or cried, the reality of it all coming back in a horrible rush as Darry and Soda reassured me that I was okay – that _everything_ would be okay.

But I _wasn't_ okay. I hadn't been, since that night.

Now, here I was, back again. Same place, one year later. Things looked just as they had the last time I had been here at night, and, with a heavy sigh, biting back tears, I sat in the spot where, on _that night_, I had sat next to Johnny. I had been to the lot a million times during the day over the past year, but this was the first time I had been back at night. The memories were just too raw. Even now, I could see Johnny, sitting there, his hands shoved tightly in his pockets, his greased hair shining in the glow of the fire we built up against the cold and wind, his eyes dark and thoughtful.

He'd been upset - as if getting blown off by a couple of Soc girls had been the end of the world. It wasn't, of course… I certainly knew _that_ now. I had seen the real end of the world – of _this_ world anyway, for two of my best friends, not even a week later. But, on that night, none of that had happened yet. I'd still thought, back then, talking to Johnny, that the loss of my folks was the only big loss I'd be dealing with for a real long time.

But it wasn't. Not by a long shot. And it was the _why_ of it all that I was still struggling so much to understand. Just… why? Why _them_, why _us_? Why _not_ me? I felt like I'd just been searching, all day, every day, for a reason, that reason for which – as everybody kept telling me - things happened, but it just didn't really seem to exist. It was all a myth - there just simply was no good reason. Johnny may have died to save those kids – people tried to feed me _that_ as a reason, but I sure as hell helped save those kids, too, and I didn't have to die because of it, so why did Johnny? And then _Dallas_, too? Why were _they_ the ones to die, and not me? Because, God knows, I sure wasn't doing anything to make my life any more important than theirs had been, a year ago. Johnny thought those kids' lives had been more worthwhile than his own? Well, my life since he died hadn't exactly been anything to write home about, either. I was stuck, and trapped, and confused; sad ... going nowhere ... and I hated it.

I hadn't cried in months, I'd just pushed back the feelings and pressed on ahead, carefully hiding everything I was feeling, keeping myself in check, and not letting anything boil over. But there, in the lot, alone – so blatantly_, painfully _alone in contrast to sitting next to the soulmate who had shared that seat with me a year ago, on _that night_, there was no longer any holding back. I broke down, crying like a baby, pulling my knees up against my chest, finally lying down on the ground and feeling the dirt and gravel against my cheek, my tears wetting the ground until I was lying in a puddle of my own salty, gritty tears. I lay there for what seemed like an hour, just letting the full weight of my feeling of loss escape. Eventually the tears slowed, and I pulled myself back together and straightened myself out, wiping my eyes and face on my sleeve, rolling over onto my back and staring up toward the night sky. The moon hung low, just rising. It was a crescent moon – a "banana moon," Mom had always called it.

"All my little monkeys better be in bed," she'd call out to us boys at bedtime. "You _know_, the lions can see that it's a banana moon, and they'll be out hunting monkeys who aren't safe in bed!"

Soda and I would shriek, and Darry would laugh at us, too old to fall for Mom's getting-us-to-bed tricks, but keeping her secret safe, as she'd wink at him...

As hard as I might try, I couldn't even remember myself as that kid, that Ponyboy for whom the biggest fear was of the dark, of imaginary predators outside the window. I knew real fear now - that there were _real_ predators, _real_ things - people that attacked in the dark of night; scared you, and hurt you, and changed you forever into someone else.

_That's_ what I wanted, I realized, then. Along with a reason for everything that had happened, I wanted to go back to being the person I'd been a year ago, up until that night. The person I was before I scared Darry badly enough that he'd hit me, before Bob, before the church, and the fire, and losing Johnny and Dallas. More than anything, I wanted _that_. Yet I knew it couldn't happen. That person was too far gone; I was someone else, now. And I was still a stranger even to myself, a full year after that night.

As I lay there staring straight up, the stars were clear and distinct in the cold night air, sparkling in the blackness. I recognized Orion, and picked out the Pleiades, finally tracing the handle of the Big Dipper over to the North Star. I had seen it, that night in the lot, occasionally obscured by clouds, but I clearly remembered that I had been staring at it, clear as day, listening to Johnny's voice, when I had fallen asleep.

Damn it, _why_ had I fallen asleep?

I tried not to think about it, tired after a full year of beating myself up over the _why_ of everything that had happened. I just focused on that star. Historically, it was a star of guidance, assuring untold numbers of sailors of the direction in which they should be heading. Looking up at that star, I found myself wishing on it, like a little kid - fairly _begging _for that same guidance.

"Please," I whispered. "Help me get past this. If I can't have a reason for it, then just help me find my way past it." So much brighter was this star, than all of the others.

Suddenly, I remembered something I had seen on TV once, some film taken from one of the space missions, where they had filmed the trip into orbit from Earth, starting at lift off. At first, the features of our planet were distinct and clear: buildings, lakes, forests… but as the rocket got farther and farther away, things just meshed into each other, one thing indistinguishable from the next, until, finally, faced with a view of the entire planet, the concept of an individual human being seemed completely insignificant and meaningless, considering the scale of things. I wondered, far away on that one star I had chosen, if Earth was even visible. I pictured what I would be, to something looking towards me from that star. Less than a speck of dust, an atom - nothing. And yet my thoughts, right then, felt like an entire universe unto themselves.

I wished that time worked the same way space did… that the farther away things got, the smaller and less significant they seemed. I just didn't see it happening; it seemed certain to me that the week I'd lost Johnny and Dally would always loom huge and important; a giant and imposing moment in my life, never getting smaller and disappearing, like people do in the rearview mirror as you leave them behind and move on.

I just couldn't seem to take my eyes off that star. Something about it just made me feel centered, _grounded_. As if, for a moment, I knew my exact place in the cosmos. I was just a kid, lying in _my_ lot, in _my_ neighborhood, just down the street from _my_ house, the only home I'd ever known. For now, anyway, it was my place. Maybe not much of a place, but _my_ place. It was _something_ certain in a world of uncertainty – the very ground beneath me was solid, unwavering.

Suddenly, there were hurried footsteps, and a voice.

"_Pony?_" It was Soda, worried to see me lying down on the ground, quickly coming over to me. "You okay?" Darry was right behind him. I had told them I was going for a walk, probably close to two hours before.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I said, though I still couldn't tear my gaze away from that star.

"Glory, it's cold out here, Pone. What're you doing?" Soda sat down next to me and as he looked down, he must have noticed tears that I didn't even know had still been falling. He wiped them away, his voice taking on a soothing tone. "Hey… Pony, what's wrong?"

I didn't answer. It only meant something to _me_, I was sure. It was nothing, to anybody else.

Darry sat down on the other side of me and took my hand. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him, looking up. Looking for answers, too.

"_A year, Soda. It's been a year_." Darry barely whispered. He knew. He remembered. He cared. Now I _could_ feel my tears.

Soda didn't say anything, just rubbed my hair. I still stared straight up, not wanting to look away, not wanting to lose my place in the universe.

"I'm sorry, Pony, you know that, right?" Darry's voice was soft, but steady. "I have been since the second it happened and I will be, 'til the day I die." He squeezed my hand.

"I know," I said. I knew – I had always known. I hated that I had run, all the while, _knowing_.

"Pony…" Darry started to say something, and the tone in his voice finally broke the star's spell and I turned to look at him. There were tears in his eyes, too. Suddenly, things didn't seem quite so confusing anymore. Johnny and Dally were gone, forever, but _I _was still here. I had to go on – both Johnny and Dallas would have wanted it that way. Maybe, someday, I would find my reason – a reason that I had lived, instead of them - but, for now, I just had to hold on to the place I already occupied. Not necessarily moving ahead right away, but not falling back, either. Looking at Darry right then, as his eyes met mine and he reached down to pull me into a hug, while Soda's arms snaked around me from behind, I somehow knew that I would be all right, at least so long as I stayed as steadfast in my place as that star that hung up in the sky; shining, despite all of the blackness around it.

"Glory, the stars sure are bright tonight, huh?" I was surprised to hear Soda whisper. He wasn't normally one to look at the stars.

"Real bright," Darry and I whispered, at the same time.

Somehow, then, I just knew, eventually, that everything _would_ be all right. Never the same, but all right, regardless.

.......................

**A/N: Comments are greatly appreciated! Happy Good Fic Day!**


End file.
